For answer Madame went to the door, closed it, and turned the key.  Then she sat down beside a little table with a candlestick and took up her knitting.

“It will be as Monsieur says,” she answered.

I smiled.

“And when Mr. Temple comes in will you kindly say that I am waiting for him in his room?” I asked.

“As Monsieur says,” she answered.  “I wish Monsieur a good-night and pleasant dreams.”

She took a candlestick from the table, lighted the candle, and handed it me with a courtesy.  I bowed, and made my way along the gallery above the deserted court-yard.  Entering my room and closing the door after me, I drew the miniature from my pocket and stood gazing at it for I know not how long.

CHAPTER XII

LES ILES

I stood staring at the portrait, I say, with a kind of fascination that astonished me, seeing that it had come to me in such a way.  It was no French face of my imagination, and as I looked it seemed to me that I knew Mademoiselle Helene de Saint-Gre.  And yet I smile as I write this, realizing full well that my strange and foreign surroundings and my unforeseen adventure had much to do with my state of mind.  The lady in the miniature might have been eighteen, or thirty-five.  Her features were of the clearest cut, the nose the least trifle aquiline, and by a blurred outline the painter had given to the black hair piled high upon the head a suggestion of waviness.  The eyebrows were straight, the brown eyes looked at the world with an almost scornful sense of humor, and I marked that there was determination in the chin.  Here was a face that could be infinitely haughty or infinitely tender, a mouth of witty—­nay, perhaps cutting—­repartee of brevity and force.  A lady who spoke quickly, moved quickly, or reposed absolutely.  A person who commanded by nature and yet (dare I venture the thought?) was capable of a supreme surrender.  I was aroused from this odd revery by footsteps on the gallery, and Nick burst into the room.  Without pausing to look about him, he flung himself lengthwise on the bed on top of the mosquito bar.

“A thousand curses on such a place,” he cried; “it is full of rat holes and rabbit warrens.”

“Did you catch your man?” I asked innocently.

“Catch him!” said Nick, with a little excusable profanity; “he went in at one end of such a warren and came out at another.  I waited for him in two streets until an officious person chanced along and threatened to take me before the Alcalde.  What the devil is that you have got in your hand, Davy?” he demanded, raising his head.

“A miniature that took my fancy, and which I bought.”

He rose from the bed, yawned, and taking it in his hand, held it to the light.  I watched him curiously.

“Lord,” he said, “it is such a passion as I might have suspected of you, Davy.”